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High-rise apartment block mooted to replace inner-city car park

A high-rise apartment block has been mooted to take the space of the inner-Wellington Alpha Street Wilson car park which has been placed on the market for sale.

An inner-city Wellington car park with resource consent for the construction of a new 15-level apartment block has been placed on the market for sale.

The 930 square metre rectangular site at 10 Alpha Street in Te Aro is currently operating as a tarsealed Wilson car park with spaces for 32 vehicles. The property has additional pedestrian access off Courtenay Place

Resource consent in place allows for the construction of a 43 metre high apartment block – consisting of 69 apartments, configured as:

41 one-bedroom apartments

21 two-bedroom apartments

five three-bedroom apartments

five further three-bedroom apartments with a study

and

44 car parks.

The site is being marketed by Bayleys Wellington salespeople Grant Young and Mark Walker through a tender process closing on September 14.

Mr Young said the undeveloped inner-city site was bordered by a combination of low to medium-rise commercial buildings - with ground floor retail tenancies, and a mix of offices and apartments above.

“Plans have been drawn up to maximise returns from the Alpha Street site – hence the configuration of purely residential dwellings and associated car parks rather than diluting the mix with any retail or office space,” Mr Young said.

“This would allow a higher quality apartment block to be developed with an atrium-style entrance lobby. The Wellington City Council consented plans are part of the sale offering, but of course any potential purchaser/developer would be free to resubmit their own set of blueprints.

“Any development is protected to the north by a height restriction over the adjoining property.”

Wilson Parking currently has a three year lease on the Alphas Street site – generating annual rental of $75,000 + GST. However, there is a 45 day demolition clause in the lease contract which would allow any potential buyer to begin building work almost immediately.

The freehold land has a 2015 council rating valuation of $2.25 million – made up entirely of land value with no building improvements on the site.

Mr Walker said that as corporate tenants relocated out of older mixed use office and retail blocks in the Te Aro precinct, a growing number of commercial real estate owners were reconfiguring their properties into apartments before strata-titling the units and selling them off individually.

“Demand for inner-city residential units is higher than for the same space in a commercial use model. So owners of such real estate can now derive better returns from modernising their older space in a different use rather than refurbishing the office fit-out with the hope of attracting in a new corporate tenant,” Mr Walker said.

“Seeing this trend evolving for several years now, the owners of the land at 10 Alpha Street set about acquiring the necessary planning consents for a purely residential development. However, with a change in their property investment focus outside of Wellington, they are now looking to sell the asset with all the initial hard work done for taking this site to a new future.”